Are gnats baby flies?

The term midge means “little fly”, but “small” and “young” should not be confused.

The baby fly does not look anything like the adult: it is an apodous larva (devoid of legs), also called maggot.

In the house fly (

), which regularly enters our homes and measures up to 8 mm in length, the female lays up to 1000 eggs of about 1.2 mm in diameter from which white maggots emerge after a day.

After feeding greedily on any decaying organic matter within their reach for two to five days, these larvae transform into pupae from which adult flies emerge, fully formed.

There is therefore no growth phase similar to that of mammals in these animals;

when we observe flies of smaller size in our homes, it is quite simply that they do not belong to the same species.

There is indeed a small house fly (

) of smaller size, which measures up to 6 mm in length.

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What about gnats then?

The species commonly referred to as “midges” are even smaller, and they are varied.

It can be the Drosophila or fruit fly (

), which measures about 3 mm in length and lays eggs in the fruits, or other diptera of the genus

, blackflies, which are found mainly in wetlands.

These tiny flying insects have the ability to bite humans and other mammals because the females need blood to produce their eggs.

We can also speak of gnats in reference to sandflies, very small blood-sucking insects that look more like mosquitoes than flies when viewed under a microscope.

In summary, the term “midge” comes mainly from the fact that the general public knows very little about the immense diversity of Diptera insects (that is to say, insects with two wings), of which there are no less than 150,000 species!

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